The start of the hike - off through fields of wildflowers, with great views down the valley (La Grave is about a half hour's drive down the valley - you can see some of the twists and turns of the road on the right hand side of the picture on the right).

The self portrait, with the glacier in the background.  On the right, a somewhat more challenging section of the trail - a narrow enough trail, with a steep enough drop, that there was even a wire bolted into the rock as a handhold!  Let's just say that we held John and Lydia's hands VERY tightly on this stretch of the trail - John understood why, but Lydia was not the happiest and wanted to know why she couldn't just run along the trail!!

Asleep in the morning.  The room had been full (12 people), but most folks got up around 4 or 5 am
to hike/climb further up in the mountains - we were lazy didn't make it to breakfast until
7:30 am (the latest that still served breakfast!)
All in all, the kids loved the trip and they loved staying at the refuge (John in particular had
a great time making friends with an English couple we met there, who were doing a week or so
hut-to-hut trip), but it was clear that they were pretty tired while hiking back to our tent
the second day (especially Lydia - we wound up carrying her a lot)